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Does anyone have any thoughts on what the parameters are that cause the "oil maintenance mode" to kick in and force the ICE to run? Yesterday morning it kicked in and stayed on all day. I only had ~225 miles on the vehicle. It was still on this morning, but as I was coming back from a site visit (~30 mile round trip), the EV finally re-engaged. The manual was pretty useless since it implied this could be reset after changing the oil. Ummmm, not at only 225 miles am I changing the oil!

The frustrating part was how poor the acceleration was when it was in the gas engine only mode. We have a couple of small hills in town and I felt like I was going to have to get out and push it up them yesterday.

I had seen that someone else has posted about this several months ago - sounded like temperature could be a factor. Our winter weather is NOT leaving and it was 14 degrees yesterday morning and about 17 this morning. High never got above 25 yesterday. We might break freezing today.

I understand the concept of why this mode needs to run periodically but really would like to understand how frequently I should anticipate it.

I had that issue when mine had about 300 miles on the clock. It stayed in that mode for two full tanks and shot my Avg MPG to heck. It finally went off after I ran the tank down to the red warning level. @ ~6000miles now and it hasn't returned.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what the parameters are that cause the "oil maintenance mode" to kick in and force the ICE to run? Yesterday morning it kicked in and stayed on all day. I only had ~225 miles on the vehicle. It was still on this morning, but as I was coming back from a site visit (~30 mile round trip), the EV finally re-engaged. The manual was pretty useless since it implied this could be reset after changing the oil. Ummmm, not at only 225 miles am I changing the oil!

The frustrating part was how poor the acceleration was when it was in the gas engine only mode. We have a couple of small hills in town and I felt like I was going to have to get out and push it up them yesterday.

I had seen that someone else has posted about this several months ago - sounded like temperature could be a factor. Our winter weather is NOT leaving and it was 14 degrees yesterday morning and about 17 this morning. High never got above 25 yesterday. We might break freezing today.

I understand the concept of why this mode needs to run periodically but really would like to understand how frequently I should anticipate it.

Do you have a level 2 charger or are you just using the 120V one that came with the vehicle?

The Battery Pack uses cabin air to heat / cool it. If the ambient air in the cabin is too cold, I am pretty sure the EV mode is disabled

until it warms up. Someone from a colder climate should weigh in on this.

I took delivery of my vehicle at the end of December, it was really cold by CA bay area standards.

My vehicle is outside at night, but plugged into a level 2 charger. The first really cold morning I went to drive

the car, EV mode was disabled and the ICE (engine) started and ran until the cabin warmed up a bit. Then EV mode became available.

After that I used the remote start and ran the vehicle for 10 min, with climate set to 70 deg. (The my ford mobile app wasn't working yet).

Now I have a go time programmed in with a temp of 65deg. Note: Doing this with the 120V charger will run down your battery pack.

I currently have 2800+ miles on my car, now that you mention it, I realize that the engine kicked in far more often in the first 1000 miles.

Never got any messages though.

Did you happen purchase the engine block heater option for your vehicle?

I don't understand the message, unless there is a freeze (too cold) parameter the engine controller uses, and decides it must

run the engine to cycle the fluids. These vehicles use electric heat for the cabin climate control, so running the engine

I use the 120V charger. EV mode has never been disabled in the morning when I leave the house no matter what the temperature is. The only time the ICE kicks in is if I have the climate system on (I don't have an objection to this - some mornings the seat heater is just not enough!).

No, no engine block heater! We don't get that cold in Chicago, at least not since the early 1980's - I do vividly recall a morning when the temperature was minus 25 (BEFORE windchill!) when I was still living in an apartment and did not have indoor parking.

The message might have made more sense if I hadn't been using ICE at all, but I did enough driving this past weekend to need it and I also turned on the climate system on Monday and Tuesday mornings because it was too darn cold. I was willing to take the hit on the gas usage.

FYI, ICE will kick in for cabin climate control under the right conditions. This was discussed on an different thread.

I had that issue when mine had about 300 miles on the clock. It stayed in that mode for two full tanks and shot my Avg MPG to heck. It finally went off after I ran the tank down to the red warning level. @ ~6000miles now and it hasn't returned.

I had this condition start while I was sitting in the car on a cold afternoon (a little below freezing), with the car turned on but plugged into a level 2 charger and (obviously) not going anywhere. I probably had about 300 miles on the odometer at the time.

Interestingly, during the time when I was sitting there "idling", with the ICE on due to "Oil Maintenance", the ICE itself was not just idling -- it was actively going through a cycle of revving the engine to medium-high RPMs then going back to a very low RPM. I'd say each high-low RPM cycle lasted about 15 seconds, and there were dozens of them over the course of 30 minutes.

The revving led me to speculate it might be some kind of break-in related routine, since I remember once hearing it's beneficial for operators to vary up the RPMs on engines in break-in within some prescibed range (though I have no idea whether that's actually sound advice).

It stopped being in Oil Maintenance later that day (maybe 6 miles of actual driving), and went back to EV mode.

Also in Chicago and I posted on this in the past. The mode is supposed to go on only when the ICE has not been used hardly at all for a prolonged period to prevent too much condensation from building up in the oil (and leading to damage). This happened with mine roughly every 200 miles for four times -- stayed on for about one day, roughly 20 to 25 miles each time. Even though I was runnning in charge sustain about a third of the time including occassional 50 mile rides. Dealer said their check said it was working just right. Calling the people above them was told that the computer measures ambient temperature and decides how often and how long it should run and that whatever it was doing must be okay if the dealer computer check said fine (which reminded me of Nixon's old "If the President does it, it is not ilegal." comment!) Since then took a trip to drop a kid back off at college (Galesburg, 3 hours away) with immediate turn around back home and it stayed off until yesterday, when it was on only for about 10 miles. I was less disappointed in the fact that there was this quirk as I was in the response: a new vehicle they should be looking for the quirks to fix them in next year's model.

Interestingly it does not run in charge sustain while in "oil maintanence" -- this last time it started when I had just hit zero in the battery and ended with 2 on it ... it runs the engine constantly, revving often, and was charging the battery along the way! (And never using the battery for a transient EV only mode.) Much poorer mileage than in regular charge sustain (such as EV later) which honestly is only "good" as it is. And yup it accelerates poorly when in that mode. And it was actually pretty warm out yesterday.

The other cold weather quirk I've had is the charger door freezing stuck. I can now tell when I am about to close it that it is not moving well so do not shut it all the way else I can't open it later to plug it in.

@DonS - thanks for the additional information. I'm closing in on 300 miles today so will see if this happens again next week. I am getting a longer, higher speed drive tonight since I'm heading up to the O'Hare area for a wedding. I also will have more ICE miles this coming week since I'm doing site visits that will take me out of my normal travel area.

I haven't had any issues with the charger door. But will keep an eye on that as well.

Reading these entries is not encouraging. My new Energi went Oil Maintenance Mode going to lunch on Monday at 111 miles and is still running as of my trip to work Thursday morning. While my first week of driving did not include any long trips and were mostly 5 miles or less (the reason for going with the Energi) the engine would come on and run some just due to the battery sustaining a series of 5 miles to work, 5 miles to lunch and back, and then 5 miles home on a daily basis during the break-in period. My Avg MPG has gone from 44 down to 38 and still falling.

After my Ford Service Manager researched the problem I got basically the same answer that spaghetticat mentioned. That this was normal and occurred to lubricate the engine along with warming the oil to a specified temperature to assure no buildup of water or gas in the oil. I'm beginning to question this part answer. On my trip home last night I took the freeway, 8 miles at 60-65 MPG and an outside temperature of 52 degrees. The damn thing is still in Oil Maintenance Mode.

I have even gone so far as following the steps on page 279 of the Owners manual to reset the Oil Usage setting which was supposed to clear it and it hasn't'. As my gas gauge is RAPIDLY approaching 3/4 of a tank I can only hope it changes soon. Otherwise, with this type of behavior I would have been better off with the straight Hybrid version as my test drive in it was better MPG than I'm getting with the Energi.

Obviously, Ford didn't have their vehicle go into Oil Maintenance Mode during their EPA Mileage Tests.

Hey I understand the logic of the mode. But the algorithm they have set up is faulty.

It turns on (at least during winter) at absurdly frequent intervals, even when the car has been running its ICE a fair percent of the time, staying on for much longer periods of time than heating up the oil and flushing out condensation should require, and runs the engine in an insanely ineffiicent revving manner while it is on.

And the only answer to that we seem to be able to get is that if it is doing it and the computer check says okay then it is working perfectly. Yes, it is working according to the design specifications ... its just that design specs are very flawed.

Just a suggestion: If you're getting Oil Maint mode regularly, take a road trip. Give the car 2+ hours on the interstate in EV Later mode, enough to get the engien nice and hot. It may be that it's staying on because it's detecting a problem, but lots of short (cold) driving isn't solving that problem. My guess is that once you do that, it'll clean itself out and start acting nicely again. If not, then bug the dealer again.

I agree with mikeb that the short trips aren't meeting what the computer is looking for. It's probably looking at the oil temp for for a certain period of time. Like normal operating temp (180 deg?) for 20, 30, or 60 minutes. Has anyone run the engine for a half hour or some other extended period and it still remained in oil maintenance mode?

Also frequent short cycles of the engine maybe what is triggering the oil maintenance mode. It would have been nice if ford would have published some cause and effect in the owners manual if this is whats going on with the oil maintenance mode.

Edit:

Noticed spaghetticat indicated that their car came out of oil maintenance mode after 30 minutes and 6 miles. I wonder if that was all in one consecutive run?

Yes, it came on after having had a 45 minute drive in charge sustain (battery "depleted") at highway speeds within the week before and then stayed on in that revving mode for a full day of driving including half hour at a time trips.

And, as I noted in my post #9, it's come back on, albeit only for 10 miles of driving, within a few weeks of a 6 hour road trip all in charge sustain. The dealer and the level above says that if the computer says it is okay then "there is no problem" even if I don't like how it works.

After 4 days, 57 miles, a drop of 11 MPG average, and a 1/4 of a tank of gas, my Energi went back to EV mode yesterday. What ever engineer determined that at just over 100 miles you need to waste 1/4 of you tank of gas because you were running mostly on electric needs to be fired. My reason for purchasing the Energi over the Hybrid was that between driving to/from work and to/from lunch, I could do it all on electric power and minimize my gasoline consumption. If this is a one time occurrence then so be it, but if this is normal performance and happens regularly then it needs to be made public, and a part of the sales brochures and sales process. Otherwise Ford is selling the car under false pretenses.

The performance suffers greatly during Oil Maintenance Mode. Once this mode starts only the gasoline engine runs and it never shuts off even at stop lights. During OMM it is not EV, it is not Hybrid, it is an old-time gasoline vehicle and worse, the engine tends to rev on its' own. This is not published to the public anywhere I know of other than these forums.

I've gone over 6500 miles with 4700 being EV. Never have entered oil maintenance mode. Doesn't get that cold in Southern California though. Has anyone in a warmer climate had to deal with Oil Maintenance mode? Or anyone with more than 500 miles death with it?

After reading all these reports, I am thinking that this low-mileage 'oil maintenance mode' may actually be an 'ICE break-in in cold weather mode'. It will be interesting to see if if does not repeat with warmer temperatures and accumulated miles on the ICE.

Turned on hVAC for a second to clear windows and engine
came on. Oil maintenance mode warning came on. HV battery had 6 miles. Engine ran in weird cycles and revved at weird times.

Couldn't make it stop. Ev now button would not work. Turned car off at light ( this can turn engine off if you get too aggressive on heating) . Nothing. Even when coasting at higher speeds the engine ran. I got 19mpg for my 9 mile commute.